Lake Thingvellavatn on Iceland. In more than one sense this place is wondrous and mystic. Geologically, the Thingvellir area is part of a fissure zone running through Iceland, being situated on the tectonic plate boundaries of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The faults and fissures of the area make evident the rifting of the earth’s crust.

Russia. I am here. I am gripped by a sense of disbelief. As the tundra flies past the train window recollections of grainy tv-images from my childhood keep popping up. The marching soldiers and missile batteries being paraded across the red square before the pouty looking Leonid Breshnev and the politbureau looking on from the top of Lenin’s mausoleum. That was scary days. The Iron curtain was impenetrable and Russia was a place only for spies and covert business men and diplomats. That is what it felt like anyway. So here I am, sipping tea in a old, but very confortable sleeper wagon heading up north from Sct. Petersburg towards the artic circle and some spectacular diving during the long days.

Cozumel combines the great reefs that one might find at the best dive spots around the warm Mexican Gulf waters with the laid back island life, where everything is close enough..

The sperm whale is the canonical whale, its form immortalized by books and drawings centuries old. When you ask a child to draw a whale, it is likely that what will come out of her developing mind most likely resembles a sperm whale, an animal with a huge, box-like head and tiny pectoral fins whose evolution seems to defy logical explanation